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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843947">Exit Wounds</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taimen/pseuds/Taimen'>Taimen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cunnilingus, Dark Fantasy, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Hate Sex, Little Red Riding Hood-Inspired, Mentions of past underage sex, Praise Kink, Shapeshifting during sex, Werewolves, scar kink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:56:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843947</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taimen/pseuds/Taimen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A monster hunter goes in search of the beast that nearly killed her years ago. But the beast is waiting for her too—and its desires are nothing that she could have expected.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Werewolf/Female Werewolf Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>What Fen Do (Instead of Going Outside), When Death Loves Flamingos</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Exit Wounds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmorousGreen/gifts">AmorousGreen</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There's a howl in the distance. It echoes through the valley, an endless wail that sounds as much human as it does animal, enough to raise the hairs on Redd's spine.</p><p>Not far enough away for comfort. Not by a long shot. It's close and getting closer.</p><p>She swears to herself as she leaps to her feet, kicks out the cold ashes of her campfire and slings her pack around her back once more. No time to dismantle her shelter, no time to hide her tracks; if she makes it to the river she just might be able to escape, and if not—</p><p>The last thing she picks up is her stake. Wooden, sharpened to a tip, coated with the little bit of aconite she's managed to find in these sparse woods. She slides into the makeshift holster on her hip, and then she runs.</p><p>When she was a girl she used to fear the <i>unknown</i>: strange eyes in the undergrowth, shapes that could be shadows and could be something else, eerie noises she couldn't name and couldn't place. Now, she crashes through the underbrush without a thought for what might be lurking on the other side. She's met the monster already. Nothing <i>unknown</i> can be scarier than than the things she knows all too well.</p><p>Her lungs burn  like hot coals in her chest. Her feet ache, toes split and bloody from the frost and the weeks of exertion. Her head pounds in time with her pulse. She's tired, so tired, but she's not going to give up. <i>Can't</i> give up. She came home after ten years away to kill the beast—<i>Should've known better</i>, she thinks, half-hysterically, should've known the ragtag group that recruited her was too wet behind the ears, too cocky, too convinced of their own immortality, but they'd had coin and confidence and hope had made her stupid—and she might have failed in that already but she's not going to let that thing get her.</p><p>She burned her fellow hunters, the one that the beast didn't get. Couldn't have her—<i>it</i> eating them. It's a small, worthless victory, to deny the beast a meal, but she'll take her pride in it all the same.</p><p>Ahead of her, she can hear the river. Redd picks up her pace, desperate hope giving her exhausted body an extra burst of energy. The water gleams bright as she breaks through the trees, sparkling in the moonlight—</p><p>And she hits the forest floor hard enough to drive the air from her lungs as something <i>massive</i> lands slams into her back. </p><p>Redd scrabbles for purchase against the soft, muddy dirt, trying hopelessly to fight off a creature easily three times her weight. This can't be how it ends, it <i>can't</i>, but there's hot breath washing over her neck, claws digging into her back straight through her threadbare clothes, and she can't even move her arms enough to reach her stake—</p><p>The beast waits, pinning her down as her thrashing slowly weakens. Redd knows she's being toyed with, knows it and hates it, but pride and fury won't let her stop fighting until she physically can't anymore.</p><p>Finally, she collapses against the dirt. She can't... </p><p>She doesn't even have enough energy to finish her winding thoughts, but she supposes it doesn't matter. She can't, that's all. She tried, and she failed, and now all she can hope to do is be a nuisance in her last few moments alive.</p><p><i>I'll stick in your throat, beast</i>, she thinks, half-hysterical, <i>I'll choke you to death from the inside.</i></p><p>If she had the energy, she'd be laughing. It would be fitting, wouldn't it? Just like the first time—except no one's coming to save her now. Redd braces for the strike.</p><p>Instead, though, the weight on top of her shifts. There's a sound like bones cracking, an odd pained yelp, as she claws digging into her skin grow longer and blunter.</p><p>It takes Redd a moment to understand, and when she does she goes cold.</p><p><i>No</i>. Dying to it is bad enough; being eaten by it worse. <i>Talking</i> to it...</p><p>There's a voice at her back, then, low and sultry and strikingly familiar. Redd's heard it in her nightmares every night for the past ten years.</p><p>"Hello," murmurs the beast into Redd's ear. "Poor little hunter. I've a question for you."</p><p>The voice is like a hammer; it cracks something deep inside of Redd, leaves her eyes stinging and her heart pulsing rabbit-quick. She tries shifting against the dirt, to no avail. The beast's weight is less than it was when she wore her lupine skin, but she's still far heavier than any woman should be. Redd was always small, even before her time spent hungry in the woods; the size difference between them is almost comical. </p><p>"Kill me," Redd snaps. She's stopped wishing she could reach her stake, and started wishing she could reach up to cover her ears.</p><p>"Oh, poor thing," murmurs the beast, "are you always so quick to plead for death?" There's a low, rumbling growl, then, a laugh too bestial to fit the voice it's supposed to belong to, and she adds, "Well, perhaps I'll grant you your wish. But first..."</p><p>Her claws—hands, now, sleek and smooth and beautiful and <i>no</i>—grip the side of Redd's face, forcibly turn it so one side of her is pressed into the dirt and the other is free to stare up at the beast. </p><p>She's as lovely as Redd remembered: dark hair shot through with silver; eyes the color of flint; small, pert breasts; a body that's wiry and firm with muscle. Her lips curl into a toothy, too-sharp smile as she runs a finger down one of the many scars that carves through Redd's face. She follows it down her throat, across her collar, pulls back Redd's shirt to try and trace it further—and laughs once more when Redd jerks away from the touch.</p><p>"This," she says, "what a magnificent wound. I thought I knew it—there's no teeth and no claws that could leave these but mine, are there? But I don't play with my food." Her head twitches, as if she were trying to flick ears she no longer has. "Well, not for long, anyway. Who are you, hunter? What have you seen?"</p><p>For a moment Redd can't think, can't speak—even breathing is beyond her, hidden somewhere behind the wall of white-hot fury that's consuming her now.</p><p>"You," she manages finally, and then, "you <i>animal</i>, I'll cut your throat—"</p><p>The beast's movements left her just slightly more freedom. She reaches out with one weakened hand, not towards a weapon or even some bit of sharp rock on the ground, but right for the beast's throat. She isn't sure, even in that moment, <i>how</i> she'll slice open a monster's jugular with only her soft human hands, but every bit of her is convinced it will work. If Redd can only wrap her hands around the beast's throat, the sheer force of her rage will carve through that monstrous skin and give her scars to match the ones she left on Redd.</p><p>How dare she. <i>How dare she</i>. Redd has never once in her life been allowed to forget—not in the months after, when only bandages and the town doctor's clumsy medicine kept her tattered flesh together; not in the dreams that leave her gasping for air; not in the moments when some stranger glances her way, and sees her scars, and turns with a look of pity to look in any direction but hers. </p><p>If she isn't allowed to forget, then this animal isn't either. She deserves to have the memories carved into her, every bit as deeply as she once carved these scars into Redd.</p><p>The beast's hand catches Redd's. She draws it as close to her as she can force Redd's arm to bend backwards, ducks her head down the rest of the way to meet it. Without a moment's care to how badly Redd wants to kill her, she wraps her lips around two of Redd's fingers. She presses down—not a predator's bite, not even close, but enough to make Redd cry out at the memory of one more agonizing—until blood wells up on the pads of Redd's fingers.</p><p>Her gaze sharpens. She lets the hand slip from between her lips, lets Redd cradle it against her chest, and then says, quietly, "Redd?"</p><p>Redd flinches. Her name in that mouth, between those teeth—</p><p>"Oh, Redd," breathes the beast, "it <i>is</i> you. How...?"</p><p>She scrambles off of Red, graceful even in that quick movement, but Redd only has time to pull in one lungful of air, then another, before the beast's hands are on her again. She flips her over so she's lying on her back with her face to the sky, handling her so easily that she feels like nothing more than a doll. </p><p>Redd burns with humiliation as the beast settles back on top of her, this time able to meet her gaze face-to-face. The beast's settles a knee into the dirt on either side of Redd's hips, caging her body between her bare and mud-stained thighs, and gathers up both Redd's hands with one of hers to pin them against the damp earth. There's a long, jagged scar starting just below her ribcage and running across her stomach to the opposite hip. Another thing Redd remembers.</p><p>This time Redd doesn't bother trying to struggle. It'll only be another vicious reminder of the strength difference between them. She just goes limp against the dirt, glares up at the beast, and waits to feel those teeth on her once more. If she's flipped their position like this, she must not intend to make Redd's death swift.</p><p>She won't scream, she tells herself. She knows she's lying.</p><p>Instead of a bite, though, the beast reaches down with her free hand to play with the threadworn collar of Redd's shirt. Her fingers find the scars there, stroke steadily across them.</p><p>"Redd," she murmurs, "I can hardly believe... I remember the taste of your blood." True to form, the grin that crosses her face then is wolfish. "And your flesh."</p><p>"You had a lot of it," Redd says dully.</p><p>"Yes," she agrees, "and yet you lived, bearing my marks on your skin. And you returned to me."</p><p>Redd blinks. Something about her tone is strange. The anger Redd expected isn't there, nor is the hunger. She sounds almost—</p><p><i>Pleased</i>, Redd has just enough time to think, before the beast leans down—her hair falling around them both like a curtain, her eyes two pools of ink—and grips Redd's chin, and kisses her.</p><p>"<i>Mmph</i>!" Redd says, jerking at the touch. </p><p>She can't get away. The beast has her hands pinned, her face held immobile, her body helpless beneath her weight. The beast's tongue is in her mouth, exploring her, and her teeth graze Redd's lips and Redd doesn't <i>understand</i>, she doesn't know if this is it, if she's about to be devoured...</p><p>Her body, worthless thing that it is, knows what it wants. Her heart is pounding in her chest once more, from fear and something else. There's an ache between her legs; she clamps her thighs together and can't make it go away.</p><p>This is wrong. It's disgusting. But she's never once been kissed since the day she got her scars—with a face like hers, who could she ever find? And even as the beast deepens the kiss, her hand is sliding from Redd's chin across her cheek, to cup her skull and tug at her hair in a way that sends prickles down her body. </p><p>She hasn't been felt anything like this since... well. Since the beast, the first time around.</p><p>Back then, after she'd been rescued—barely sitting up, still too weak to stand—she'd lied to the hunter who came to question her. She'd told him the beast had snatched her off the path without warning; that it had carried her away in its jaws as she screamed; that Redd had no idea why it hadn't finished eating her. One of those things is true.</p><p>Redd was born of a hunter's lineage. She knew from the start the dangers that lurked in the deep woods, knew why they needed to be killed. But the beast... the beast came to her in the same form she wears now: her hair with a few fewer strands silver, perhaps, the scar on her stomach not yet carved into her. And Redd was fifteen, and desperately lonely, and half-aware even then of something she couldn't name that set her apart from the other women in their village.</p><p>She found the beast in the deepest part of the woods, far off the beaten path. Sweet as honey, rich as blood; she'd never once met anyone—<i>anything</i>—like her. And it had been so, so easy to travel to the woods time and time again, to push back the part of her that knew what those too-sharp teeth and those strange inhuman footprints meant. To fall for her and fall into her bed. Until—</p><p>Until the beast used those teeth on her. Stupid, selfish girl.</p><p>Redd bites down hard on the beast's lip, trying to draw blood, but all it does is make the beast groan into her mouth. She grinds her hips shamelessly against Redd's, a friction she can feel even through her clothes, and when she finally pulls back for air her smile is as light and unashamed as ever.</p><p>"I missed you," she says, "I missed you, I missed you so much. You should've come back to me sooner."</p><p>"You tried to kill me!" </p><p>"No. I never wanted to harm you. If I'd tried to kill you, you'd be dead." The beast's gaze drops to Redd's scars. "You're human, that's all. Fragile. When I thought you'd betrayed me, I forgot my strength for a moment."</p><p><i>I forgot my strength</i>. Months of agony, a decade of living with the shame and the pitying eyes, and that's what it comes down to.</p><p>"But it won't happen again," adds the beast, breezily. "And you came back to me. So you can stay with me now, like you should have."</p><p>"I came here to kill you," Redd snaps. She's furious and confused and so, so tired. </p><p>Is this how the beast always was? When she was young, she'd looked at her as a kindred spirit—just like any human, but wilder, freer, able to read all of Redd's most hidden desires. And then, after, she'd seen her as a monster, a cruel thing playing crueler games. She'd manipulated Redd for months just so she could watch her suffer.</p><p>But this... this is neither. The beast's mind moves like water, her thought process constantly running from one topic to the next. Redd can no more try to reason with her than she could change the path of a river by cupping it in her hands.</p><p>The beast blinks. "Kill me?" </p><p>"Like you killed my mother."</p><p>She'd told her she had a secret she wanted to show Redd, and she'd smiled like they were playing a game. She'd brought her further into the woods than Redd had ever gone before, through twisting paths that no human being could have followed. And then, at the end—</p><p>Redd had known her mother was on a hunt. She hadn't guessed which creature she was hunting. And she hadn't expected what the beast was leading her to: a mess of gore and meat, torn to shreds, barely recognizable as human, with her mother's blade dug into the ground next to one shattered and half-devoured hand.</p><p>It had been easy to pick up the knife. Like watching from outside her body as someone else moved for her. And it had been just easy to bring it around, into the beast's flesh, and carve a path from rib to hip in her perfect lovely skin.</p><p>Nothing after that had been easy. Not the stab of pain as the beast's teeth tore into her, not the hours she spent fading in and out of consciousness, hoping that someone would find her. But that first moment had been the simplest thing she'd ever done.</p><p>"Your—oh! Was that your mother? I suppose it makes sense, then, that you were upset." She laughs her rough-edged laugh, sounding almost embarrassed. "I wondered, you know? I thought perhaps you were squeamish. But it's all right. I understand."</p><p>The beast stood next to her kill so proudly, like a cat bringing a mouse to its master. Redd had always assumed it was one more bit of cruelty from her. Driving in the knife. </p><p>Redd lets her head fall back against the soft ground. There's nothing left in her. Just the sky above her and the mud smeared into her scalp and the distant sound of rushing water.</p><p>"I'll kill you," she murmurs. "I'll cut your throat." </p><p>There's no conviction in her words. Even she can feel how hollow they sound. The part of her that's overwhelmed with desperate relief—it wasn't Redd's fault her mother died, she didn't lead the beast to her after all—has crashed up against the part of her that's sick with horror and the realization of just how little about the beast she'd ever understood.</p><p>"You won't," the beast says back gently. "You wouldn't have come back if you hated me, would you?"</p><p>Redd doesn't have an answer for that. </p><p>The beast smiled at her silence. "You were meant to be here. Don't worry. I'll help you remember."</p><p>This time, when she leans in to kiss her, Redd doesn't struggle. She opens her mouth for the beast, lets her slip her tongue inside, lets her teeth catch on Redd's lip to draw pinprick spots of blood.</p><p>"Lovely," the beast murmurs, "look at you, so perfect, so beautiful," every breath a chance to mutter more praise against Redd's lips before pressing their mouths back together once more.</p><p>She's still pinning Redd's arms; she loved that, even back then, holding her down and watching how little Redd could do to escape. Her free hand trails down to Redd's shirt again. This time she grabs it. A moment's blur—soft skin shifting to fur and claws—and she tears through the fabric as if it were paper, shredding the front of her shirt to expose Redd's breasts and the trail of scars across her chest.</p><p>Redd flushes to match her name, a quiet wordless protest dying on her lips. Finally, the beast lets go of her wrists, sliding both hands down to stroke Redd's skin. Her hands are warm and rough with callouses, </p><p>Redd flexes her wrists to force blood back into her hands. She could try to strike the beast, perhaps, but she'd be saving nothing but her pride. It's easier to give in. Easier to relax into the touch. Easier to press her hands against the beast's hip and ribs, and let herself remember what it feels like to touch someone for the first time in ten years.</p><p>It's just for now, she tells herself, just to survive. And if she knows that isn't true, well—who's left to judge her now?</p><p>The beast smiles at the touch.</p><p>"There," she says, "you remember," and this time when she leans back in Redd kisses her back.</p><p>She gets a hand in the beast's hair, tugs on it until the beast growls into her mouth. Her other hand she rakes down her back, weak human fingers too dull to scratch the beast's skin. The beast feels the pressure of it, though; Redd can tell by the way the moans, grinds down against Redd's body. </p><p>Even the thin layer of fabric between them is too much. She wants it all off, wants to dive a decade back in time and forget she ever left the woods. If she had never found out, if the beast hadn't shown her what she'd killed...</p><p>Would it have been so bad to live in ignorance? To be happy? </p><p>With the beast's warmth heavy on top of her, her breath panting hot against Redd's neck and her very presence like a blanket over Redd's mind, it's easy to imagine. And maybe the beast is doing something to her, entrancing her just how she always used to, or maybe she's just a coward. But that's all right too.</p><p>She rocks her hips against the beast's, begging wordlessly. </p><p>"Am I neglecting you?" asks the beast with a toothy grin, plucking at her pants. With a casual motion she tears at those too, shredding them between her claws and yanking them down off of Redd's body. Her nostrils flare. "Ah, I can smell you."</p><p>Of course she can. Redd can feel just how wet she is, just how badly her body is aching for the beast. </p><p>The beast touches her chin, tilts it upward. "Can I taste you again?" she asks, her voice low. "I missed you so much."</p><p>All Redd can do is nod.</p><p>The beast slides down her body, kissing and biting her skin in equal measure: a soft brush against the curve of her breast, a nip against the soft skin of her stomach that makes her jump and yelp, until she finally settles between Redd's legs. </p><p>Her face looks perfect, framed there, entirely human and entirely other. She pauses for a moment, waiting until Redd is squirming against her desperately, and then she pressed her face to Redd's cunt and licks into her. </p><p>Redd jerks, swears, jams a hand against her mouth to muffle the sounds she's trying not too make. The beast's tongue is as clever as it ever was: she licks her roughly, laps at her most sensitive spot until her thighs tremble from the sensation of it, tracing shapes with her tongue against Redd's body. All the while, her claws dig into Redd's thighs, hard enough to draw blood; the pain makes the pleasure burn hotter.</p><p>She'll have new scars there, she's sure, pinpricks dotted all along the most sensitive skin of her inner thighs. It's fine, it's fine, she doesn't care anymore—so long as she can have <i>more</i>, nothing else beyond that matters. </p><p>She lets her head fall back against the dirt, squeezes her eyes shut to try and ground herself—and there, with her eyes closed, she can feel the moment the beast lets go. </p><p>Fur brushes her thighs where they're clamped around the beast's body. The tongue that touches her now is still the same—but it's longer, broader, can press deeper inside her. And the noises that the beast's making now aren't the same soft noises; they're rough-edged and bestial, possessive even without words.</p><p><i>God</i>, she thinks. Even before, they never—</p><p>The beast had always been holding back before. Now she doesn't need to.</p><p>Redd doesn't open her eyes. Some part of her is afraid to see what might be kneeling between her thighs now: massive and powerful, half animal and half woman, with claws and teeth that tore her apart once before and could do it again. Some part of her is afraid she might like the sight of it.</p><p>So she doesn't look. She just listens, and feels, and lets the pleasure of it build and build until with a wordless cry she comes against the beast's claws and tongue and teeth.</p><p>She's gasping for breath. Her legs are trembling and so are her hands. She presses her palms against her face, trying to center herself, feeling wrung out and empty and floating. </p><p>The beast licks her once more. Even with her eyes close Redd can tell how satisfied she is with herself. </p><p>Some part of her remembers how this should go—she needs to reciprocate, do something more than just lie there and let things happen to her. But as she starts to pull her hands away from her eyes, another pair of hands—too large to be human, with claws Redd can feel the edge of where they touch her skin—presses against hers.</p><p>"Not yet," growls a harsh, guttural voice, the words barely separated enough to be understandable. "Come back with me first. All right? Come with me. And then we can do anything you like. Everything you like. My sweet, precious human. You can be like me."</p><p>That voice makes her hair stand on end; it's a response entirely beyond her control, the reaction of prey held in a predator's jaws. Redd knows she should run from that voice. But she nods instead, and lets the beast wrap her arms around her and pick her up.</p><p>The sound of the river recedes as the beast starts walking. There's just the beast's rough breathing, and the ind in the leaves, and her own heart pounding in her chest.</p><p>Redd doesn't open her eyes. She doesn't try to see where the beast is bringing her. </p><p>She doesn't need to know.</p>
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